Between Two Worlds Quotes

“Political slogans are like grain scattered to draw birds into a snare. Find out who’s putting up the money for a political party, and then you know what it will do.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“All that a rich man needed to be happy was to have no heart. If he had one, then all the gifts which fortune showered upon him might turn to dust and ashes in his hands.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“That was the pattern of this new society, as Lanny came to know it; boundless cruelty combined with bland and pious lying. The Fascisti would develop falsehood into a new science and a new art; they would teach it to one dictator after another, until half the human race would no longer have any means of telling truth from falsehood.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“Political slogans are like grain scattered to draw birds into a snare. Find out who’s putting up the money for a political party, and then you know what it will do.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“Of course it was wrong that some should be born to privilege while others did not have enough to eat. Of course it was right that the disinherited should protest and try to change the ancient evils of the world. Who would not demand food when he was starving? Who would not fight for liberty when he was oppressed? Who could fail to hate cruelty and injustice, and cry out for it to be ended?”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“Germany did really feed her children, and care for her aged, and build decent homes for the workers, all of which practices Beauty praised ardently—never dreaming that they had anything to do with the dreaded Socialism.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“If the slums of the Riviera were ever to be razed and decent housing provided, it could only be through the action of the workers themselves; the rich wouldn’t make any move unless they were forced: The question was whether it was to be done by the method which the world had seen in Russia and didn’t like so well, or whether it could be carried out by orderly democratic process, such as the workers of Vienna and other Socialist cities were proceeding to apply. Which way you chose determined whether you called yourself a Communist or a Socialist; whether your opponents named you Red or Pink.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“The ladies and gentlemen of fashion didn’t know that such places existed; they could hardly believe you when you told them—and they wouldn’t thank you for having told them.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“Cannes was thought of as a playground for the rich; a city of lovely villas and gardens, a paradise of fashionable elegance. Few stopped to realize what a mass of labor was required to maintain that cleanliness and charm: not merely the servants who dwelt on the estates, but porters and truckdrivers, scrubwomen and chambermaids, kitchen-workers, food-handlers; and scores of obscure occupations which the rich never heard about. These people were housed in slum warrens,”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“All the losses came back on those who had fixed incomes and salaries; the only gainers were speculators, and those fortunate few whose incomes were in dollars.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“A strange plight for art lovers, who trained themselves to be receptive and then didn’t dare use their faculties except upon imaginary things! Divide your mind in half, and build an emotion-tight compartment between the two; be sensitive to art and insensitive to life; learn to follow the example of that Russian countess who wept for the woes of the tenor in the opera while her coachman froze to death on the box outside!”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“it’s a natural reaction against the futilities of so-called democracy. The people attempt a task which is beyond their powers, the governing of a modern state, and they are brought to a plight where they are glad to have a strong man get them out of it. The strong man studies the people, understands them better than they understand themselves, and promises them everything they want; he constructs a program with an appeal which they are powerless to resist. Say that he’s ‘fooling them,’ if you wish, but even so, he gets control, and having once got it, he keeps it—because modern weapons are so efficient that those who have them are masters, provided they are not afraid to use them. The machine gun and the airplane bomb with poison gas promise mankind a long era of firm government.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“The artist is by nature, one might say by definition, an anarchist. He lives in the freedom of his own imagination, and represents the experimental element of life. If “authority” should intervene and tell him what to think or to feel, the experiment would not be tried, the brain-child would be born dead.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“which seemed to Lanny the great tragedy of the workers’ movement; he thought they had enemies enough among the capitalist class, without dividing among themselves. Yet he was forced to realize that if you believed revolutionary violence to be necessary, you were apt to be violent in advocating it; while if you believed in peaceable methods—well, apparently the men of violence would force you to be violent against them!”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“The pair practiced the French art of conversation, which meant that neither tried to force his ideas, but each brought forward such wit or wisdom as he possessed, and the other listened and in return received an equal share of attention.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“There were a few honest papers, but they reached only a small public; the big press was in the hands of the big interests, and told the people whatever suited the purposes of the masters of steel and munitions and oil.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“When I invest my money in an American company, I become an American, don’t I?” It was a remark that Lanny would never forget.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“The best that anyone could do for the present was to build him a not too costly home in some part of the earth where there was no gold, oil, coal, or other mineral treasure, and which was not near a disputed boundary or strategic configuration of land or water. There with reasonable luck he might have peace within his own walls, and perhaps think some thoughts which might be helpful to a hate-tormented world.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“The tang of autumn was in the air and the leaves were falling from the plane trees which line the streets of the towns and villages; the sun shone dazzling bright, and the tops of the mountains glittered like scenes in a fairy-tale. Long after the sun had disappeared the snow-caps were changing from pale pink to lilac and then deep purple. Stop and watch them—for it’s no good being so wrapped up in pictures that you can’t enjoy the realities which the pictures attempt to portray!”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds

“The Fascisti would develop falsehood into a new science and a new art; they would teach it to one dictator after another, until half the human race would no longer have any means of telling truth from falsehood.”
― Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds